After great success last year, Ben and I had many plans for
how to improve process, equipment, and volume for this
year. We didn't get around to all the areas we contemplated,
but were actually more ambitious in some respects. In
particular, Ben is planting an apple orchard in Maine!!

While last year's equipment served us well and had a certain
old world charm, we felt that we needed to take it up a
notch. In particular, we thought the apple grinder needed to
grind finer and the press needed to be easier to load and
unload. Also the throughput of both operations needed to
increase. It would also be ideal if we didn't have to fix the
machines several times during each use.

This led us to contemplate a frame and tray type press and a
human powered grinder.

Grinder

For the grinder, Ben suggested a two cylinder with blades
bolted on approach. Here is a drawing I made in autocad while
farting around with the idea:

I need to learn Solid Works...

There were a few ideas on how to build this including stacking
up lasercut acrylic disks. I even bought a chunk of 6 inch
round HDPE, some pillow blocks, shafting, and a flywheel, but
thats as far as I got. Ben actually made something up
involving flat head screws on wooden drums, but he said it
loaded up too easily. Maybe next year.

In the name of expediency, Ben went with the garbage disposal
solution, which turns out to kick so much ass that it will be
difficult to go back to a less effective grinding method
(which a drum grinder would certainly be). The disposal
pulverizes the apples at top speed with very little effort:

Insinkerator mounted in a piece of countertop

Note compressed air for cooling

Apples are obliterated

Press

For the press, I was thinking of something built like
furniture out of nice old wood:

Yeah... in my dreams!

However, it is lucky that Ben is more practical and doesn't
get hung up on silly ideas like that. We mulled a few options
for critical dimensions and parts and came out with a 1-1/2
diameter steel acme thread screw 3' long with two square brass
nuts, and a food service stainless pan to catch juice. These
were all bought from McMaster.

Here is Ben's design that he whipped up:

Simple and effective

He then actually built this, and it ended up looking nice and
it works very well.

Later on, Ben, JD, and I used the machine shop at E Ink to
mill a hex on the end of the screw to fit a 10 inch diameter
cast aluminum handwheel. That didn't quite work out, so for
this year we turned the screw with a hex socket with breaker
bar and a piece of aluminum pipe.

Fun in the ol' machine shop

Ready to rip into it with Wilbah

Picking

2006-09

Becky and I got the zipcar and went picking with my dad and my
stepmom Mary at Red Apple Farms in Philipston, MA. We got
about 260 pounds of 7 varieties of apples. We used some of
these for cooking and apple sauce, but most of them went to
cider.

A beautiful day, but a bit warm

Hope this goat doesn't go crazy and attack the pregnant
lady...

Meanwhile, Ben and Alexis did their usual picking at Poverty
Lane orchard in Lebanon, NH for the real cider apples.

Powerful heirloom cider apples

Processing

2006-10

Ben got a head start by running one carboy full of juice in NH
from Poverty Lane apples.

Loading pomace into the cheese mold

Four cheeses of pomace getting the squeeze

A few weeks later, Ben and I ran three carboys worth on my
front porch in Somerville. Then a week later, JD, Ben, and I,
did another two carboys on my front porch. Surprisingly none
of the many passerbys on the sidewalk inquired as to what was
going on.

JD and Ben at the grinding station

Squeeze it JD

Lots of juice

In general our yields were quite good, 70% and up. Last year
we were at about 50%. Ben did another carboy in NH, as well as
some apple-cranberry wine that was pretty good.

Ben used champagne yeast with a starter in the NH carboys,
while I used White Labs English Cider Yeast for the four
carboys we fermented in my cellar.

Bottling/Labeling

2006-12

After racking and aging for a number of weeks, we were ready
to blend, bottle, and label. We decided to bottle some of the
early, milder carboys by themselves. We ended up with two very
acid carboys, and one very bitter. One acid and one bitter
made a balanced blend, though still very strong. We blended
and carbonated in cornelius kegs.

Washing and sanitizing the corny kegs

Ben works the counterpressure bottling rig

For labels, we wanted something themed around the new person
in the mix (our daughter Ultraviolet). So we went with
Ultraviolet Revolution for the blended batch, with a science-y
themed label graphic and a reference to the peaceful
revolutions in former soviet republics in recent years.

We also wanted to make some generic labels so we won't always
feel pressured to design and print a custom letterpress label
every time we do a new batch. So we made a generic label for
'Hard Times' cider, with a nice crimson apple that I drew last
year and got turned into a plate.